Hannah Kiser - Cross Country | Track and Field

When she was crunching numbers and preparing to apply for student loans, the last thing on Hannah Kiser’s mind as a high school senior was college athletics. When she got the phone call from Idaho Director of Track and Field Wayne Phipps with a scholarship offer, her decision was a no-brainer.

Two Western Athletic Conference cross country team titles, four individual WAC titles, six First-Team All-WAC honors, three NCAA Championships bids and one All-America honor later, it’s safe to say she made the right choice.

“I couldn’t ask for a better gift in my life – it opened up this window,” Kiser said of her scholarship. “I was going to make sure from that day forward I always put in the effort to pay back the school for what they were giving me – an education, which is priceless.”

Kiser is just a sophomore and she already has set Idaho and WAC records. She’s Idaho’s first All-American in the indoor 3000m run and she is one of just two Vandal women to qualify for the NCAA Championships in cross country, indoor track and outdoor track.

Kiser the scholar still may outshine Kiser the athlete. A USTFCCCA Division I All-Academic honoree and 4.0 student with a double-major in Chemistry and Molecular Biology, she found out on the eve of her NCAA Indoor Championship race that she had been selected as a 2012 Idaho IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence (INBRE) Fellow – and couldn’t decide about which she was more excited.

“It really means a lot to me,” Kiser said about her Idaho experience. “Everything to me, about me, is about the University of Idaho. I am so proud to be an Idaho Vandal.”